Op-Ed: To tweet or not to tweet, now that Elon’s the boss

My plan was to dither. I discover that if I plan to dither, the possibilities are excessive I’ll observe by.

This week, whereas the World’s Richest Man, Elon Musk, now Twitter’s proprietor and overlord, was mendacity in wait to grab the corporate, the query earlier than a loud swath of the platform’s 400 million customers had turn into: Ought to I keep or ought to I’m going?

That’s the place the dithering got here in. I couldn’t resolve, so I made a decision to not resolve.

Musk had dithered too. Like a klutzy pickup artist, he courted Twitter after which snubbed it after which proposed marriage, all whereas proclaiming his contempt for all it stands for.

When he lastly did shut the deal for $44 billion Thursday, he immediately fired a number of key executives and acted like Twitter was his future. However for months there was no telling if he’d actually shut.

There’s nonetheless no telling if he’ll keep it up, if it would maintain his scattered consideration.

Will he really observe by on his reckless fantasies of firing as much as 75% of the employees, dropping content material moderation, opening up the platform to election and COVID and Holocaust deniers, and reinstating Donald Trump, who was banned from Twitter on Jan. 6, 2021, for inciting violence?

What a brief, unusual journey it’s been. Simply 5 months in the past, on April 5, a securities submitting revealed that Musk had turn into Twitter’s largest shareholder. That very day, Twitter’s then-Chief Government, Parag Agrawal, requested Musk to hitch the board.

“He would convey nice worth,” Agrawal tweeted, decorously. One week later, Musk declined. “I imagine that is for the perfect,” Agrawal tweeted, decorously. (Self-appointed Twitter CEO Musk fired former CEO Agrawal Thursday.)

A couple of days after Musk bowed out of board participation, in a bid that regarded hostile, he supplied to purchase the corporate at $54.20 per share. Twitter accepted.

Then Musk slowed his roll. He informed Twitter the platform was stuffed with spam; Agrawal rebutted the cost, decorously. Musk shot again: Poop emoji. Cool.

In July, Twitter sued Musk and Musk sued Twitter. In September, the Twitter board permitted the $44-billion deal. If the corporate dropped its lawsuit, Musk mentioned, he’d be again together with his checkbook. On Wednesday, he christened himself Chief Twit, and on Thursday the deal was achieved.

Whilst I’ve weighed the professionals and cons of my very own Twitter participation, I determine the secret is scanning the horizon for a vibe swap.

If the right-wing bellowers fill the Twitter halls with hyena laughter, if the door is opened to 4chan-caliber filth, if black mildew chokes the place, it’s laborious to think about staying round.

Musk tweeted “the chook is freed” on Thursday to have a good time his buy — or maybe to cowl his purchaser’s regret. I had already downloaded my tweet historical past, packed my go-bag. Later within the day, I wasn’t the one tweeter questioning: What subsequent?

Some are proposing a return to nature. (As if!) Others counsel Instagram. Neither, I’ve to confess, is suited to my Twitter goal, which has been — sentimentally sufficient — to study. I’m with the Yale historian Joanne Freeman who tweeted Thursday: “I’d be unhappy to not have this venue for discussing historical past and politics!”

One other proposal: Tribel, a Twitter semi-dupe that kinds itself as a haven for progressives. I signed on, solely to find that Tribel is a undertaking of Occupy Democrats, a partisan propaganda outfit. There have been loony lefty folktales about Fox folding and John Fetterman successful the Pennsylvania Senate race by 1,000,000.

Shameless disinformation is repellent, even from one’s personal facet. I give up Tribel — or, as I now name it, Blue Newsmax — 5 minutes after I began.

Planetary is one other service talked about. It’s promising. It boasts decentralized servers, however it is rather, very new and thus very, very buggy.

For now, lots of people seem like heading for the Twitter exits even with out a stable different. And even earlier than Musk took over.

This week, Reuters acquired an inner analysis doc from Twitter known as “The place Did the Tweeters Go?” which revealed that, because the begin of the pandemic, energy customers, who generate half of world income and 90% of all tweets, have been in “absolute decline.”

Massive accounts — @justinbieber, @ladygaga — now publish sometimes and in a professional forma type. And tweets that push cryptocurrency and porn are the platform’s fastest-growing subjects amongst heavy customers on English-language Twitter.

This redlight-district Rubbish-Pail-Youngsters stuff repels advertisers. And the second Musk took the reins, racist trolls cheered, blasting feeds with the N-word and antisemitic hate. “Elon now controls Twitter,” one mentioned, “Unleash the racial slurs.”

Anecdotally, follower counts are falling; I do know mine are. However boycotts within the digital age are usually busts. Idle threats to delete Uber or Fb en masse haven’t amounted to a lot, so some imperious Twitter quitters (“this can be a cesspool, a hellhole!”) are being charged with crying wolf.

Many journalists, writers, professors and performers have resolved to remain on, however simply to tweet out their information and work. A jokey motion can be afoot to “Tumblrize” Twitter — overrun it with smut and desert it, as customers did to Tumblr after Yahoo acquired it in 2013,

I issued a Twitter ballot final week. When Musk arrives, I requested, will you (a) depart (b) keep (c) dither (d) pretend depart? With some 450 replies, “depart” got here in second and “dither” got here in first.

It’s the one approach. Till the vibe shift is evident, I’m giving in to my Conflict-like confusion: If I’m going there shall be bother. And if I keep it is going to be double.

Virginia Heffernan is a columnist for Wired journal and the creator of “Magic and Loss: The Web as Artwork.” @page88